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Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Sewcation fail: defeated by a baby beanie and a broken sewing machine

Generally speaking, a hat pattern should allow for the insertion of a head, right? Not so this Ottobre reversible baby beanie (at least not as written).

I started off my two-day sewcation yesterday morning in high spirits, dressed in me-made maternity clothes with a mocktail in hand:

I began with what I imagined would be the easiest project possible, to ease myself back into things: a gender-neutral baby jacket and hat gift set made from a repurposed cashmere sweater. I planned to appliqué a little blue felt bicycle on the jacket and line the baby hat with soft blue bamboo knit.

I cut out both but I figured I'd start actual sewing with the baby hat, the cute little bear-eared knit "Ernie" beanie with just ONE pattern piece from the 1/2013 issue of Ottobre. WHAT COULD BE EASIER, RIGHT? I mean, I've made lined dresses and overalls and trousers and things with buttons and collars and plackets... A KNIT BABY HAT SHOULD TAKE FIVE MINUTES RIGHT?

Sorry if I am shouting. But I really can't help it.

Because TWELVE HOURS LATER I found myself unpicking THOUSANDS of tiny white zig-zag stitches out of fuzzy white cashmere sweater knit BECAUSE if you follow the Ottobre instructions in the order as written THERE IS NO OPENING FOR AN ACTUAL BABY HEAD.

I thought maybe I had just done something wrong, but I made some tiny little hat mockups (see photo at top of post) just to confirm I wasn't totally out of it... and then I searched online and found every single person who had attempted the hat had the same problem and had had to drastically alter the pattern to actually work. (Really, who'd think you'd need to read pattern reviews for a BABY BEANIE?).
So I cut some head openings and resewed it together my way, and now all I have to show for my sewcation is one cute (if way too labor-intensive) little cashmere hat. I could have KNITTED it faster from scratch.

And that's probably all I'll have to show for my sewcation, since this morning the screw threads wore out in my needle clamp and now every needle I attempt to insert just falls right out with a maddening "Ping!" sound. The shop says it will take at least 10 days to repair as they are backed up.

In the meantime a friend is going to loan me her Featherweight, but renting a Zipcar and traveling way out to Queens with a broken sewing machine wasn't exactly the sewcation I had in mind. I might defer that for another day and spend today cutting out a few projects and knitting.

10 comments:

Oh I'm so sorry! That SUCKS! I hope you're able to salvage the break in some small way -- maybe do the cutting/prep for one or two projects that you're the most excited about? End it with a small win? Glad that you have a finished project at least....there are so many days that I definitely done even have a small baby hat to show for my trouble... ;)

Oh man. What bum luck!! I hope you can get some groundwork - cutting, pattern altering, prepping - done for some of your projects so that it will be at least a day when you can get yourself organized and set for future projects.

Baby heads are a whole lot bigger than people who've never had a baby might believe -- a lot of them are almost adult-sized. Better luck with your next attempt. Time to take up your needles and knit, until your own machine can be repaired.

Aw... I'm sorry to hear about this! I'm impressed with your determination to get something useable, I think I would have thrown it in a drawer in tears. I hope you can do some sort of making, but even if the rest of this time is just relaxing with tasty drinks it's time well spent :)